I have 3 domains
these 2
http://www.janhendrikx.be
http://www.standenbouw-jan.be
redirect to
http://www.ontwerpbureaujan.be/
In google webmasters I added ontwerpbureaujan
Do I have to add the others too? Or do I get duplicate content
Do I have to use canonical URLs? How?
'Standenbouw' is my main seo keyword, maybe I should add http://www.standenbouw-jan.be to webmasters, not ontwerpbureaujan ? ...
I'm sure janhendrikx.be & standenbouw-jan.be have 301 redirects to ontwerpbureaujan.be
If not, please get it done by your Web host else Google will actually consider them as three different websites and will crawl them all.
If they have 301 redirects, then you could add the others too and Google would know that they are the same site and hence wouldn't crawl all of them.
But you could still add all of them and it may increase your pagerank for the keyword and in that case you could mention http://www.ontwerpbureaujan.be/ as your preferred domain on the site settings area.
Here are a few recommendations by Google itself:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en#4
Good luck!
My subdomains are going to be city names:
miami.mysite.com
newyork.mysite.com
I don't know how most sites handle subdomains. My idea is simply to point them all to mysite.com and somehow get the subdomain name with PHP so that I echo the city posts and content with PHP.
Providing all subdomains have different Titles and Description. Will google index each subdomain as a different website?
Yes, Google will index each one as a separate site. However make sure you consider the pros and cons. Here's a good starting point: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
My opinion is go with subfolders (e.g. mysite.com/miami) instead of subdomains, mainly because consolidating inbound links to a single hostname will build more authority over time than if the same link juice is diluted among hundreds of subdomains. Also I think it would be hard to build enough unique content on each subdomain to support or justify having a separate site.
When I searching our web site on Google I found three sites with the same content show up. I always thought we were using only one site www.foo.com, but it turn out we have www.foo.net and www.foo.info with the same content as www.foo.com.
I know it is extremely bad to have the same content under different URL. And it seems we have being using three domains for years and I have not seen punitive blunt so far. What is going on? Is Google using new policy like this blog advocate?http://www.seodenver.com/duplicate-content-over-multiple-domains-seo-issues/ Or is it OK using DNS redirect? What should I do? Thanks
If you are managing the websites via Google Webmaster Tools, it is possible to specify the "primary domain".
However, the world of search engines doesn't stop with Google, so your best bet is to send a 301 redirect to your primary domain. For example.
www.foo.net should 301 redirect to www.foo.com
www.foo.net/bar should 301 redirect to www.foo.com/bar
and so on.
This will ensure that www.foo.com gets the entire score, rather than (potentially) a third of the score that you might get for link-backs (internal and external).
Look into canonical links, as documented by Google.
If your site has identical or vastly
similar content that's accessible
through multiple URLs, this format
provides you with more control over
the URL returned in search results. It
also helps to make sure that
properties such as link popularity are
consolidated to your preferred
version.
They explicitly state it will work cross-domain.
A friend of mine had a report done on an old site I built. One of the issues mentioned in the report was the following:
Your website needs a www resolve.
Currently you can go to
http://urmarialarts.com or
http://www.urmartialarts.com which
means in Google's eyes you have two
websites with the same content. You
should set the hosting up so you are
redirected
Is this the case? And if so do I need to setup a 301 redirect on one of the domains to point to the other?
Yes and yes, for further information: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=44231
You should entirely avoid this problem by using a canonical link tag. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
I'm setting up a number sites right now and many of them have multiple domains. The question is: do I alias the domain (with ServerAlias) or do I Redirect the request?
Obviously ServerAlias is better/easier from a readability or scripting perspective. I have heard however that Google likes it better if everything redirects to one domain. Is this true? If so, what redirect code should be used?
Common vhost examples will have:
ServerName example.net
ServerAlias www.example.net
Is this wrong and should the www also be a redirect in addition to example2.net and www.example2.net? Or is Google smart enough to that all these sites (or at least the www) are the same site?
UPDATE: Part of the reasoning for wanting aliases is that they are much faster. A redirect for a dialup user just because they did (or didn't) use the www adds significantly to initial page load.
UPDATE and ANSWER: Thanks Paul for finding the Google link which instructs us to "help your fellow webmasters by not perpetuating the myth of duplicate content penalties". Note, however, this only applies to content ON THE SAME SITE, exemplified in the article with "www.example.com/skates.asp?color=black&brand=riedell or www.example.com/skates.asp?brand=riedell&color=black". In fact, the article explicitly says "Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content."
Redirecting is better, then there is always one, canonical domain for your content. I hear Google penalises multiple domains hosting the same content, but I can't find a source for that at the moment (edit, here's one article, but from 2005, which is ancient history in Internet years!) (not correct, see edit below)
Here's some mod-rewrite rules to redirect to a canonical domain:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.foobar\.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://www.foobar.com/$1 [L,R=permanent]
That checks that the host isn't the canonical domain (www.foobar.com) and checks that a domain has actually been specified, before deciding to redirect the request to the canonical domain.
Further Edit: Here's an article straight from the horses mouth - seems it's not as big an issue as you might think. Please read this article CAREFULLY as it distinguishes between duplicate content on the same site (as in "www.example.com/skates.asp?color=black&brand=riedell and www.example.com/skates.asp?brand=riedell&color=black") and specifically says "Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content."
SSL certificates can also be an issue (wild card certs mitigate this but are more expensive).
So if the cert is only bound to www.example.com, it won't validate for example.com. If this circumstance applies to your case, then carefully handling, redirects and hyperlink references in your html and javascript is very important.
If they are entirely different domain names, you will want to redirect because otherwise cookies can not be shared between the two. If a user logs into your website at example1.com, they will need to log in again if they visit example2.com.
If they are just different subdomains (example.com vs www.example.com) this won't matter.
Server aliasing can cause problems with CGI session continuity: since cookies are attached to the domain they were served from, CGI scripts have to be carefully written so that they are aware of the aliasing, or all links within and into the site have to be relative, or both - it is much harder to avoid niggly little hard-to-debug problems due to the browser serving you different cookies based on whether the user last entered your site through name.tld or www.name.tld.
Nowadays I doubt it matters. If you see both entries in google, then you know you're doing it wrong.
If half the links to your site refer to one URL and half refer to another, each URL is only going to get half the pagerank. Even if Google doesn't penalize your rank for having duplicate content, you're going to suffer.